“Train your Bees”

The life of a honeybee is mostly a predictable one: Young bees, called house bees, do the hive chores, feeding the brood, cleaning and repairing cells, they grow up to become a nurse, helping to feed the larvae in the hive and caring for the Queen. Some guard the hive to keep out raiders and then transition to a forager, heading out from the hive, travelling to find sources of nectar and pollen to bring back.

In the Hive, bees’ development progressions and movements are stimulated by the colony’s need, in a business environment, how can you NOT train your employees to perform better?

Training your employees isn’t just a need, it is simply a necessity. Last week, I ran 4 days of Customer Service Training sessions, I felt so overwhelmed how positive all the employees were; and for the employees having their company spending time and money on them, giving them the tools to provide Excellent Customer Service is also a proof of their commitment.

There are certain skills that employees need to master when they are facing their customers, regardless of the type of contact that you have with customers, whether it is over the phone, face-to-face, in a restaurant or shop, in an office or financial institution, in the entertainment or tourist industries, good customer service skills help everybody.

Some which are basics such as polite, friendly, smiling, helpful, but some others don’t come as naturally and need a little bit of practice to give them more confidence. Take one example: asking questions? this is a very big part of any good sales assistant, the more open questions you asked, the more information you will receive from the customer, the more efficiently you can give them exactly what they needs. Another example would be “Selling”, you can’t sell anything if you don’t know your product or service, if you go in a restaurant and ask the waiter what is the soup of the day, he will never be able to sell that soup if he doesn’t know what it is today! Same with any products or service, the first part of any sell if the product knowledge.

So, take the time to train your employees on your products, what are the benefits for the customer then what are the features, always starts with the benefits and show them how it will meet their needs. A feature is simply a characteristic of your product or service, such as a Camera that shoots up to 10 megapixels, well the benefit could be that more megapixels will produce a better photo and a better way to capture important memories; this will mean more to the customer than a technical description.

So, take a look at your training plan for this year:

– are you taking the time to train your staff on their knowledge of your products and services?

– have you got some Customer service training already in place?

– can you identified areas where you need to improve your staff performances?

Act now and give them the tools to provide Excellent Customer Experience.